Old Sayings, Asylum Seekers and Dogen

There is an old saying in Zen: “In the beginning, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; later on, mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers; and still later, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.”

There is a path to follow which is the circle of the way. Each moment is complete in itself yet leads on forever.

Such throw away phrases as "All is one" should be understood in a genuine context.  Ubiquitous in serious teachings of the "east" are words such as these....

It is not that duality stops existing or functioning; the small is still small and the large is still large. The body remains the body and the mind remains the mind. Without discerning the differences between things, we could not conduct even the simplest task of our daily lives. And yet...

The "and yet" is the key, words which lead to the meeting of "east" and "west", where the "incomprehensible" God of the Christian mystics, beyond all knowing, can meet the non-theism of Buddhism.

In the end, as D T Suzuki has said, we become the same old Tom, Dick or Harry we have always been. Nothing is lost. No "self", dissolved, slips into the shining sea. 

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time   (T.S.Eliot)

The journey is required, the circle of the way.

Moving on, and safely settled in Costa's, time to ruminate further. 

Latest in "Global Britain" is news of a tragedy in the English Channel, with at least four people drowning as they sought asylum in our land. One a five year old, another just eight. There are reports of a baby entering the water. I tend to think of my own grandchildren, just about the same ages.

As a sovereign nation, which is what we claim to be, we signed a 1951 Convention, which recognises that people fleeing persecution may have to use irregular means in order to escape and claim asylum in another country – there is no legal way to travel to the UK for the specific purpose of seeking asylum.

Indeed not. And since 1951 as a sovereign nation we have invaded other countries - uninvited - bombed others, sold billions of arms around the world which have been used in various way - most to kill and maim, to strike terror into human hearts. So, as I see it, we have ensured that a steady stream of those seeking asylum will seek those illegal ways. And to save our moral rectitude we then express our anger at those who "exploit" the refugees and asylum seekers, while our Government comes up with such ideas as "wave machines" to flush the human debris back to France. Well, anywhere in fact, just so long as they do not reach Global Britain.

Well, here is Dogen.....

On the great road of Buddha ancestors there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moment’s gap; continuous practice is the circle of the way.

Which seems a shift in topic and perspective. But if Dogen's words are understood, taken to heart, this is not so. For Dogen, time was being. Forget Einstein, relativity, and the warping of time and space, one the other. Dogen seemed to apprehend such long ago. Lived it. On the cushion and in the kitchen. While common sense tells us that there was yesterday, and now we are in today, and tomorrow is coming - a linear perspective - for Dogen his meditation, his life, was "an ocean that is serene and yet dynamic, its field as vast as spring time, which encompasses all of its flowers, birds, and mountain colors. Being in spring, he heard the sound of a valley stream or became a plum blossom swirling in the wind."

Very fanciful. Much like some, even most, of the garbage that passes for "thought" in our very own restless minds, each and every moment, as we ourselves progress through time, our anticipations and epitaphs, desires, likes and dislikes inevitably creating the suffering we are fleeing from. And so Dogen had his fancies and we have ours.

So much for Old Sayings. Ever new.

Meanwhile, perhaps even now, as I sip my cappuccino, another group of migrants are being ushered towards an inflatable dinghy, securing their lifebelts, reassuring their children.

Dogen once said that nothing in the entire universe is hidden and that there are no unanswered questions. In fact it was not Dogen who said this.....

Dogen simply told a story of when he was a young novice monk and he spoke to a temple cook in China. Dogen asked the cook, “What is the practice of the Way?”

The cook responded, “Nothing in the whole world is hidden.”

I think maybe we just make what is perfectly simple, complicated .

Related Quotes:-

Whoever told people that ‘Mind’ means thoughts, opinions, ideas and concepts? Mind means trees, fence posts, tiles and grasses. " (Dogen)

If consciousness is confined to the skull, how can joy exist?  (A zen master)

Hakuin's Chant

After much time spent with Dogen, I turned to another zen master, Hakuin. He wrote a "Chant in Praise of Zazen", often chanted at zen monasteries. This is how the chant begins:-

From the very beginning all beings are Buddha.

Like water and ice,

without water no ice,

outside us no Buddhas.

How near the truth

yet how far we seek,

like one in water crying ‘I thirst!’

Like a child of rich birth wandering poor on this earth, we endlessly circle the six worlds.

The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.

From dark path to dark path we’ve wandered in darkness.

How can we be free from birth and death?

We cry "I thirst". Yes, we do. Well, I do.

What to drink is also all around us.

Listen to Donald Trump, to anything he says, read the body language, apply just the minimum of intelligence, and we surely must despair that a human being such as he has risen to what might be called "the top". What does it say of our "civilization"?

Look at the current alternative. Is Joe Biden any real "answer"? Where does it leave us?

Sometimes the temptation is to want to wipe the whole slate clean and start again. But I think we have to stay with it.

Anyway, here is Proust, from his "Remembrance of Things Past":-

"A pair of wings, a different mode of breathing, which would enable us to traverse infinite space, would in no way help us, for, if we visited Mars or Venus keeping the same senses, they would clothe in the same aspect as the things of the earth everything that we should be capable of seeing. The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is....."

But to return to Hakuin's chant, the second line......

 "Like water and ice, without water no ice."

(Best heard or chanted while sipping cappuccinos in Costas)

Commentary by Albert Low:-

We live as though we are frozen. Our personality, what we call “myself,” is knowledge, memory, attitudes, beliefs, and judgments, which have become solid, and so have become like the bars of a cage.

It stands to reason that we live on a solid rock, immobile, the centre of the Cosmos, all things revolving around us.

The continual stream of verbiage issuing from the mouths of our so called "leaders" makes me dauntless in simply saying whatever I like. I have never felt so alienated from what is called the UK and the direction it appears to be taking. 

New Eyes and Grace

 

Two more posts from the Forum Site. The first was initiated by another saying that we must realise that we are the product. I was not really sure exactly what he meant, but he had the screen name "Crusty Fart" which encouraged me to respond!

The post:- 

Once more settling down in Costa's, feeling quite fit for a 71year old (if I could just throw off this persistent cough and temperature I would be A1.........joke)

I was reading above about needing to know that we are the product. I thought and wondered about WHEN we become the product. Which as I see it involves considerations of causes as opposed to symtoms. We seem more often than not to spend all our time messing around with the symptoms. Which brings me back to WHEN and HOW we become merely a PRODUCT.

I will take a rest now and resort to the words of Layman Hsiang, who also seemed to ponder such things.....

Shadows arise from forms, echoes come from sounds. If we fiddle with shadows and ignore the forms, we do not recognize that the forms are the roots of the shadows. If we raise our voices to stop echoes, we are not cognizant of the fact that sounds are the roots of the echoes. To try to head for nirvana by getting rid of afflictions is like removing forms to look for shadows. To seek Buddhahood apart from living beings is like seeking echoes by silencing sounds. So we know that illusion and enlightenment are one road. Ignorance and knowledge are not separate. We make names for what has no name. Because we go by the names, judgments of right and wrong arise. We make rationalizations for what has no reason. Because we rely on the rationalizations, argument and discussion arise. Illusion is not real: who is right, who is wrong? The unreal is not actual: what is empty, what exists? Thus I realize that attainment gains nothing, and loss loses nothing.

Shinran of the Pure Land path agreed that we cannot get rid of afflictions, in fact do not, need not, to reach the Pure Land, speaking though of a "sideways leap". Maybe such leap is much the same as reaching for the blanket, but I doubt it. Maybe it is seeing with new eyes.

Well, so much for post one. A second quickly followed, this inspired by a thread I started myself regarding ways of interpreting Scripture. Once again, I found it difficult to truly understand some of the posts - but lack of understanding never deters an ardent Dookie! But one poster had sought to insist that any sacred text must be read pillar to post. Again, that many texts had been "amended" over time as the orthodox authorities sought "power."

The post:-

I must have read the NT right through about 6 or 7 times, various versions. Loving literature and "style" I still love the cadences of the King James version. The OT, not so sure. Certainly never beginning at the start and reading right through. But also various commentaries on the texts, O & N Testaments. The commentaries on the OT by Jewish worthies are sometimes very illuminating and makes me think that they have more often recognised the Messiah than many Christians.

Having dipped into various books about the formation and writing of the two testaments, yes, "power" and the desire to control seem to have "amended" the text. But as I see it, it is more the "interpretation" of the text by "orthodox" bodies (self appointed) and the condemnation of alternative readings that invites the exercise of power, the contempt towards the true spirit that seeks only our good.

Myself, I am not really an advocate of what "must" be read, part or all, whatever. If enlightenment/salvation is the bottom line then one word can be enough, or even no word at all. Obviously its reassuring to know that whoever is pontificating upon the "true" meaning has in fact read most, if not all, of any "sacred/holy" book, but the arguments back and forth are, for me, chaff in the wind.

It's much like Finnegans Wake. One word contains all others. Grace.

Thus ends the second post.

Foreigners and Social Media

 

During the Covid era I spent much time in Costa's, finding it therapeutic. With Kindle in hand I felt free to make posts on a Forum site, the subject whatever came to mind given the latest news. Here are a couple of my posts, the first made in response to reports that the UK Government was determined to reduce, or even halt entirely, the number of asylum seekers reaching our shores.  Such reports included various ideas being considered, such as giant wave machines designed to waft the dinghies of the refugees back to the French shore, or the use of giant nets. Well, whatever the truth of such ideas, I made the following post on the Forum:-

Irrespective of the claims of many (the "I'm not a racist but" brigade) it was the subject of immigration that won the EU Referendum in the UK. The "we beat 'em twice in the war (i.e. Germany) and STILL they tell us what to do" argument that resonates with the Brexit faithful.

We are all immigrants: it simply depends how far back you go. As any who know our history are aware, Britain has "absorbed foreign genes since it was first discovered by continental wanderers." And to the advantage of all - this beyond dispute.

When it suits the cry goes up "we are a Christian nation" but exactly what does that mean? That we welcome the stranger as Christians are instructed to do in the book none of them read? Well, no. More "Charity begins at home"......now THAT'S more like it!

Alas, I feel more and more alienated in my own country.

Reading recently........"It is strangely easy to forget that immigrants are often, and by definition, entrepreneurial risk-takers and rule-flouters, with a keen sense of individual liberty. The big idea of globalisation, for instance, is that the world should uproot the barriers to the free flow of trade. Yet few of the world’s richest countries are happy to extend this freedom to the free flow of labour. Goods, services, capital – these must be allowed to run free. But people must be shackled at all costs."

So, shackle the people. Let the money flow free.

A second post was made regarding some words by another that was concerned about the bias creeping into the Social Media sites. Sitting in Costa's I was in slightly frivolous mood and had no real idea exactly where my post would take me. But here it is:-

Safely (well, as safe as can be these days, as my local lockdown level switches from Tier 1 to Tier 2) sitting in Costa's I can give vent to yet another load of drivel as I sip my extra-hot cappuccino. (I must say, standards are slipping even here. Often I would get a nice heart shaped dose of chocolate sprinkles, or maybe - my favorite - a frog. Now its just a blob, possible some sort of Rorschach test, who knows?) Anyway, where was I?

Good luck with sorting out our Social Media, deciding exactly where the bias is to be found and who is initiating it. It seems that early on certain groups sought to use its potential for spreading their own various versions of "truth". Then the Social Media giants sought to counter the misuse. Now they, in seeking to do this, are themselves accused of their very own bias. So it goes on. 

As I see it, our own bias will determine much of how we decipher the current situation. We are all complicit in the various modes of distortion of the world around us. First as innocents, new born, then taking our very own modes of conditioning, unquestioned, draping them on the world around us - with the cry of "it stands to reason", "it's simple common sense", or "it speaks for itself". Well, it doesn't actually but no worries.

Here is where I seek to add gravitas to this waffle by a bit of name dropping. Immanuel Kant made the observation that humans are beings who ask themselves questions that they are ultimately unable to answer. Heidegger that "we are the beings who interpret"......this in the sense of who we ARE not simply as what we do on occasion.

The world is not a given that "stands to reason". Facts are there to be interpreted. There are no guarantees. Another philosopher, Wittgenstein, asserted that "meaning" as such was not so much "found", more we have to show it, this by our lives, our actions, our words.

It is a tough task. Instead of basking in our very own indubitable "truth" that "stands to reason" and is "self evident", we must risk error, be vulnerable, and more, listen to the voice of the "other" who have their own truth.

Easy perhaps to cop out. To look to a "world to come" where The Truth will be awarded to the "chosen ones", this world, here, now, discarded. But if we choose to value this world, and if we choose to insist that all are chosen, then our life can take on infinite meaning, infinite potential.

Well, that is how I see it. Maybe it is the coffee talking.

That is it. Two posts. Perhaps not worth salvaging. But I enjoy expressing myself. 

Pure Land Hymns and Finnegans Wake

 

 I am slowly moving on into Finnegans Wake (when not hiding beneath the blankets seeking solace from Brexit) and have now reached page 27. Enjoyable in its own strange way. Maybe, in time, when historians look back, they will make more sense of it than many a newspaper editorial.......certainly of transcripts of the average speech of the average politician.

Well, the blanket joke IS a joke, yet I do suffer from anxiety and what could be called mental health issues, plus, like all of us, we all have real issues to face and to live with.

One character in Finnegans Wake is the Eternal Mother, the wife of Earwicker, one Anna Livia Plurabelle. She continually appears under various guises......as Joyce explains:- "Grampupus is fallen down but grinny sprids the boord"

Anna is many things, the "untitled mamafesta memorialising the Mosthighest", but above all, she is a river, always changing but ever the same, the flux which bears all life on its current. Joseph Campbell, in his "Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake", writes......


Principally, she is the River Liffey, running through Dublin, but she is also all the rivers of the world: the heavenly Ganges, the fruitful Nile, the teeming Irrawaddy, the mysterious Nyanza. She is the circular river of time......bearing in her flood the debris of dead civilizations and the seeds of crops and cultures yet to come.

I feel a strange comfort in the words "debris of dead civilizations", especially when I look around me.....however much I try to love all that I see.

As respite from Finnegans Wake I am always dipping into the Hymns of the Pure Land Masters, written by the 13th century Pure Land "master" Shinran.

One begins:-

"The light of wisdom exceeds all measure and every finite living being receives this illumination........."

Wisdom here is chie . Chi = thinking by reflection and judgement, discrimination. E = no-activity through stilling such thought, beyond all grasping (in the sense of self justifying)

Such wisdom is bestowed and shared by grace by Reality-as-is, the ground of all being. We tend to get in the way of it, but there is always hope.

The light of this wisdom is described by Shinran as "the true and real light" and also the "liberating wheel of light." Real because all things will unfailingly reach fruition. Which is a comfort that I need.

It might be guessed that I am here again in Costa's, a place I find therapeutic. One of the ways that Amida "liberates" me in a very minor way, giving me the strength to face the onslaught of a world slowly going mad. I can only hope.